Current location in this text. Enter a Perseus citation to go to another section or work. Full search
options are on the right side and top of the page.

require instruments for their performance, in the
shape of friends or wealth or political power;
[16]
also
there are certain external advantages, the lack of which sullies supreme felicity, such as
good birth, satisfactory children, and personal beauty: a man of very ugly appearance or
low birth, or childless and alone in the world, is not our idea of a happy man, and still
less so perhaps is one who has children or friends1 that are worthless, or who
has had good ones but lost them by death.
[17]
As we said
therefore, happiness does seem to require the addition of external prosperity, and this is
why some people identify it with good fortune （though some identify it with
virtue2）.9.

It is this that gives rise to the question whether happiness is a thing that can be
learnt, or acquired by training, or cultivated in some other manner, or whether it is
bestowed by some divine dispensation or even by fortune.
[2]
（1） Now if anything that men have is a gift of the gods, it is
reasonable to suppose that happiness is divinely given—indeed of all man's
possessions it is most likely to be so, inasmuch as it is the best of them all.
[3]
This subject however may perhaps more properly belong to another
branch of study.3 Still, even
if happiness is not sent us from heaven, but is won by virtue and by some kind of study or
practice, it seems to be one of the most divine things that exist. For the prize and end
of virtue must clearly be supremely good—it must be something divine and
blissful.
[4]
（2） And also on our view it
will admit of being widely diffused, since it can be attained through some process of
study or effort by all persons whose capacity for virtue has not been stunted or maimed.
[5]
（3） Again, if it is better to be happy
as a result of one's own exertions than by the gift of fortune, it is reasonable to
suppose that this is how happiness is won; inasmuch as in the world of nature things have
a natural tendency to be ordered in the best possible way,
[6]
and the same is true of the products of art, and of causation of any kind, and
especially the highest.4 Whereas that the greatest and noblest of all things should be left to fortune
would be too contrary to the fitness of things.
[7]

Light is also thrown on the question by our definition of happiness, which said that it
is a certain kind of activity of the soul; whereas the remaining good things5 are either merely
indispensable conditions of happiness, or are of the nature of auxiliary means, and useful
instrumentally.
[8]
This conclusion6 moreover agrees with
what we laid down at the outset; for we stated that the Supreme Good was the end of
political science, but the principal care of this science is to produce a certain
character in the citizens, namely to make them virtuous, and capable of performing noble
actions.
[9]

We have good reasons therefore for not speaking of an ox or horse or any other animal as
being happy,

1 Perhaps ‘or friends’ is slipped in because of ‘alone in
the world’ just above, but friends should not be mentioned here among the
indispensable conditions of happiness, as they were included just above among its
instruments （see 8.2, first note）.